#AU where the frontier-crew are gods I guess

[childrenofmeyneth]

Machina-centric Sea-faring based AU

I'm doing a little exercise where people voted on what kinda AU I should make, and I make an AU based on it! It's an AU that'll basically be f2u if you see it and like the concept a lot and wanna expand in your own way, I guess is a way to put it?

Let's go, then, under the cut. Starting with: basic lore of this AU

The world is set in an endless sea, one people are slowly starting to explore more. There's only two known actual land masses, but also a bunch of artificial ones set up by Homs.

Homs and Nopon are naturally land-based, while High Entia and Machina are sea-based

High Entia are merfolk -- instead of headwings they have headfins!

Machina are deep sea monsters, bioluminescent the lot of them. Think... sea serpents but make them mermaids.

Machina also have full-on sea serpent forms and fully humanoid forms. Usually, they take on the merfolk-like forms, however!

Machina are huge. Like. Big Enough To Constrict and Break Your Ship Huge

Both Machina and High Entia can breathe out of the water, but are more comfortable breathing in the sea

Similarly, Nopon can breathe in either but prefer the feeling out of water most of the time (those that prefer breathing in the sea often move to Alcamoth).

Homs, however, cannot naturally breathe underwater. A kiss from a High Entia or a Machina can allow them to breathe underwater, a bit uncomfortably.

High Entia are more likely to do this, as they can have children with Homs. Machina only do it when necessary to save lives, as Homs are often afraid of their appearance.

Face Pilots equivalent in this are Homs who are cursed to turn into sea monsters similar to the Machina whenever submerged in water.

Meyneth is the Goddess of Darkness, Zanza is the God of Life. This is reflected in where their creations live (Homs/Nopon/High Entia live above sea/places in the sea where sunlight reaches. Machina live in the depths of the Endless Sea)

The curse affecting some Homs has unknown uses, though it was definitely made by Meyneth. The reason for it has been lost to time.

Machina seem to see this as more of a blessing, when not forced on someone and instead something chosen by the Homs

One of the real pieces of land houses Frontier Village, the other a Homs colony. Underwater both Alcamoth and Agniratha exist!

Agniratha is full of lights, for the sake of Homs who were too injured to be taken back to the surface. Machina can survive on the low light they generate, but Homs cannot.

Homs often travel the seas in ships with crews, setting out to see how far they can travel through the sea. Nopon often join them on their journies.

Pirating has become quite the norm, due to cutthroats being the type to often venture out further. High risks, high rewards, and all that.

These wrecks are often where both High Entia and Machina find Homs that they kiss and take to their cities.

Now some general plot things:

Land is limited, and it's a problem. There are resources underwater, and tech to look down there is becoming more common... But that leads to High Entia and Machina being more known.

High Entia are more easily accepted by Homs as they look a bit more Homs-like... Machina are terrifying, though.

Agniratha is basically in danger because of this. High Entia never liked them much, anyway, so they aren't much help.

This is where the curse comes into play. It started popping up around the time Homs started pushing against the Machina. Homs think it's a trick of some sort by the Machina to scare them away.

This just makes tensions Worse!!!

Now to get Machina focused!:

Egil is the reason the curse started going off like it does. The other Machina are not pleased with this and it puts tension between them all.

Egil believes it must be done, to show them they are not threats like Homs think. Why else would Meyneth leave them this curse?

Vanea, meanwhile, is having a crisis of faith. She believes in Meyneth with all her heart, she really does... But why would their kind goddess leave a blessing that can so easily be turned into a curse?

She pulls away from people a lot because of this. This sweet girl known for always checking on others pulls in on herself a lot, studying texts left by Meyneth.

She often argues with Egil, tries to make him step back. He accuses her of not knowing what Meyneth wants and it makes the crisis... worse!

These siblings are not alright and the rift grows more and more the more Egil uses the curse! :,)

On the other end of things, Linada is starting to question her job as a doctor. More and more Machina are getting hurt by Homs...

She wonders if there's much of a point, wearing herself so thin like this when she just can't keep up with the injuries and illnesses. But she can't stop -- they need her.

Radzam, meanwhile, is keeping things as calm as he can between the Homs living in Agniratha and the Machina.

If they start pointing fingers at each other, things will get worse for all of them, right?

In my hc these two are cousins, so that carries over here, too. Both are stretched thin, but only Radzam seems to want to do something about it.

Linada and Radzam act as confidants for Vanea, often trying to counsel her through her crisis of faith and her issues with Egil, to varying effects.

Meanwhile, they butt heads with Egil. He's making their job harder but he believes this is the only way to make Homs understand. Linada nearly strangles him at some point.

At the very least, the latter three can keep Egil from outright attacking Homs directly. Egil takes chances inflicting the blessing-slash-curse on drowning Homs, instead.

Linada specializes in helping these Homs adjust to this change in their life if she's able to get her hands on them. Radzam supports her however he can.

Vanea blames herself a bit because guess what! She gave Egil the needed text to understand the curse! Oopsie doodle!

[pythosart]

A BUNCH OF LOUS Some demonic force possessed me to try and make a guide to all 700 of my AU Lous.  My brain is too busted to let me pay attention to my other ocs so I guess all 3% of my creative energy capacity goes toward iterating on this one. And guess what, I cherish them ALL Short bios/AU explanation under the cut (oops it’s long)

ORIGINAL FLAVOR BLADES LOU: Lou as initially designed, though some aspects of their backstory and personality changed as I got to know them through roleplay. Halfway through the story they took a kinda edgy turn and got deeper into cult stuff and afflicted with a worsening vampiric condition. Right before we ended the game for good, they had just died and come back as a full on, undead vampire.

Fae AU: The first AU, that kinda started it all. Stemmed from a cultist dream thing in Blades, where Lou was the prey in an Erlking-style nightly hunt. In the fae version, they’re a sylph changeling and the only child of a fading fae queen. Their arc in this deals with them struggling with their humanity and nearly succumbing to the soul-sucking influence of their mother, before ultimately restoring her “humanity” and saving themself THROUGH THE POWER OF LOVE Cult AU: Kinda started as a Blades offshoot, coulda shoulda woulda AU where we play with ideas we wish we could have tackled in the game. Quickly became its own thing, set actually on Earth in the Prohibition era (but low magic urban fantasy) Lou is French and was rescued from the middle of a WWI battlefield by Aphotis, a goddess whose own cult had just been massacred. She was as desperate for a believer to sustain her as toddler Lou was to not die. They escaped to America as refugees and Aphotis raised them as her own, and as her caretaker and dirty-work-doer in her quest to regain power. Along the way, Lou was (perhaps intentionally) introduced to an infectious piece of a primordial god, that gave them some shapeshifting abilities at the cost of rapidly draining the life from them and twisting them. Aphotis works to keep them alive, while keeping a memory-wiped copy of them (created by this parasitic god piece) around to do her bidding. This isn’t two instances of Lou, it’s one Lou with two bodies. Same person. My personal story borrows a lot from this AU as well as my character Esther’s old story Mary Sue AU: Initially a joke exercise to write intentionally terrible fanfic (as if Dom were writing about their friends in Blades) that of course became its own thing. Lou is obviously a vampire, with most of the traditional vampire rules and weaknesses. Their Tragic Past gimmick is that they were staked in the heart while still living, as bait for their vampire queen mother. It worked, she turned them postmortem, and as a result they are much weaker than a typical vampire. They also suffer a curse to stay within the bounds of their family’s ancestral castle, which has since become a prestigious university. They also become a fluffy black cat-bat thing either at will or when too weak to sustain a full sized body. Their line of vampires usually turns into cats, but Lou is a fuckup Pirates AU: Pretty straightforward. Lou is called June in this one, and is the mutinous first mate of Captain Inkblood (Cookie), who totally does it for attention. Their secret is that they became a pirate to dodge student loan debt. Stayhome AU: “Blades, but what if the formative incident for your character never happened” Lou never gets caught by the Governor’s program to round up street urchins and send them to work-school, and instead ends up working on a shrimp boat. They never develop the world-weariness and scheming nature of canon Lou, instead devoting their intellect to learning everything about shrimp, shrimping, and shrimp boats. Insert Forrest Gump scene. Eventually their crew gets captured and ransomed by pirates, but no one ever pays up for Lou, and they end up pretty happily living with the pirate crew Western AU: Gee I wonder why this big city doctor picked up and moved all the way out here to the frontier, it couldn’t possibly be because they’re running from the law. Narrator voice: They Were. Lou is a terribly unethical doctor with a reputation for experimenting on patients, and a taste for arson. After getting chased out of town and blacklisted all over the west, they find themself joining an outlaw band, as their doctor. Here, they start to learn compassion and humanity and not being a total bastard... ...until they somewhat accidentally burn a particular bounty hunter’s face off with a firebomb, and she carves them up in return. From here on, their arc is a test of their learned compassion and breaking a cycle of bloody revenge. Horror AU: Starts off as a classic summer slasher movie, with Lou as a college student with a bunch of shitty “friends” destroying a campground and partying until they draw the local monster’s ire. The monster (Dom) kills several of them, kidnaps Lou after Lou hides their fear behind sass and clearly isn’t like the destructive campers. Lou learns more about the monster and even starts to warm up to them, especially after discovering they can boss the monster around. Lou successfully escapes but runs right into a horror swamp where a nasty worm zombie pukes worms into their mouth and infests them. As the infestation progresses and nearly kills them a few times, Lou learns that the worms are intelligent and actually adore their host, and also that they can be bribed. By the end of their arc, Lou has mostly achieved symbiosis with their worms and avoided becoming a zombie,. They eventually must face off against the monsterified Queen of the Preps, Tiffany, who was similarly infested but never achieved that symbiosis. Minecraft AU, no really: Lou was a skilled tailor, and a total workaholic. Their ambition netted them a contract for a huge order of clothing for a duchess’s wedding on an extremely tight deadline, and Lou, knowing this could make them for the rest of their life, poured everything into it. They worked themself literally to death, dying of sleep deprivation. Distraught, this unfinished business drove them to make a devil deal of sorts to keep working, and they were granted this undeath, for a price. They slowly became more and more like a Phantom as they worked, never sleeping, and feeding on the dreams of those who do sleep. By the time they finished and emerged to present their achievement, they were monstrous and were chased out of town. From then on, they had lost their passion for their craft, and wandered the wilderness, sneaking into towns at night to feed on dreams, and fighting to retain their humanity as they become more and more phantom-like. Anyway I love this one so much I might make them their own non-minecraft character LotR AU: Lou is a hobbit, entrusted with the destruction of a certain magic ring. Unfortunately, they are much more corruptible than one Frodo, and early on abandon their fellowship, driven by paranoia the Ring has been growing within them. They run into a feral Mirkwood elf raised by giant spiders, and a giant orc raised by a Beorning farmer, and the three of them embark on a weird little Ring Quest of their own. TBC AU: Lou is a quiet, social outsider high schooler, with a bitter hatred for bullies and a knack for really disproportionately nasty “pranks” directed at said bullies. Too smart for their own good and with a taste for theft, Lou is a straight-A student who has been arrested for carjacking before. They end up as part of the Blackout Club after discovering their adoptive mother’s involvement with the Chorus, and out of sheer curiosity about the secret goings-on under the town. And in no small part for free run to break into houses and smear chili oil on the hands of sleepers who inconvenience them, because Lou is a bastard and has yet to learn empathy. Which, as usual, is kinda their arc here. Make friends for the first time in their life, learn empathy, get sucked into the orbit of a fairly nasty god/Voice, classic Lou stuff AND THAT’S ABOUT IT